Logo redesign brief

A brief for a freelance designer to deliver a refreshed MKFC logo system. Read the main Branding guide first — palette, typography, and “don’ts” there are binding constraints, not suggestions.

What we want

A single horizontal wordmark — for guernsey chest, cap fronts, polo embroidery, signage, hoodies. Wide aspect ratio (roughly 2:1 to 2.4:1).

This brief deliberately does not scope a separate square mark or monogram. Social media avatars will use a centred crop of the wordmark on royal blue; we accept that MOORABBIN / part of KANGAS will be the visible fragment at thumbnail size. A square companion mark may be commissioned in a future round once the wordmark is locked.

Specification

The wordmark is a New Era-style split-script lockup with two lines of text. It draws directly on the North Melbourne FC wordmark family.

Text content

• Top line: MOORABBIN
• Bottom line: KANGAS (note: not “KANGAROOS” — the supporter shortening)

Type treatment

Italic shear angle: roughly 12° (matches the existing reference render at /assets/merchandise/mkfc-cap-logo-split-italic.jpg). The designer may tighten or relax this slightly for legibility but should not exceed ~15°.

Gradient fill (lower half of KANGAS)

• Colours: #FFFFFF (White) at the top of the filled region, transitioning to #C8D6F0 (Light Blue) at the bottom.
• Direction: vertical, top → bottom. The white edge sits at the split line; the light blue edge sits at the glyph baseline.
• Per-letter, not across the word: each letter carries its own copy of the gradient. The gradient does not span the whole word horizontally.
• Smooth, not banded. Designer should ensure the embroidery digitiser is briefed on how to approximate this with two adjacent fill colours if a true gradient stitch isn’t available — see § Embroidery fallback below.

Primary background

Royal Blue #013087 (cap, guernsey). The white outline and the cap colour showing through the upper half are what create the contrast — do not place the wordmark on a white background as the canonical version; that’s a derived variant.

Reference render to evolve from

/assets/merchandise/mkfc-cap-logo-split-italic.jpg shows the split fill correctly but uses KANGAROOS and a solid white lower half (not a gradient). Use it for proportion and italic angle reference; the new direction supersedes it on text content and lower-half treatment.

Designer latitude

Within the constraints above, the designer may:

• Adjust proportions, letter-spacing, outline weight, italic angle within stated limits.
• Propose a custom condensed letterform rather than off-the-shelf Open Sans Condensed Bold.
• Recommend (but not unilaterally adopt) a slight modification to the gradient stops if #FFFFFF → #C8D6F0 proves too subtle at embroidery scale.

Hard constraints in the next section override anything in this section if they conflict.

Embroidery fallback

A true thread gradient is not always available. Where the supplier cannot stitch a gradient, the designer must specify a two-colour stepped approximation: the top 60% of the filled region in white, the bottom 40% in light blue, with a single sharp transition. This approximation must be documented in the deliverable PDF as the “embroidery-safe” variant.

Hard constraints

• Palette is locked: Royal Blue (Pantone 286 C / #013087), White, with Light Blue (#C8D6F0) permitted as an embroidery accent only. No navy, no teal, no gold, no black trims. See Branding § Colour Palette.
• Three colours maximum in any single rendition (royal blue + white + light blue). Embroiderers price per thread colour and detail past three colours stops reading at 60mm.
• No gradients, no drop shadows, no bevels, no photographic effects. Anything that can’t be reproduced in flat embroidery thread or a single screen-print pass is out.
• No combination with North Melbourne FC marks or wordmarks. Our brand draws on the same family but is independent.
• Reads at 60mm wide. That’s the cap-front minimum from the Branding guide. If the wordmark needs detail to look correct at that size, it fails.
• Typography must align with the DIN / Helvetica Neue Condensed family (or a licensed equivalent the club can use without ongoing fees). Open Sans Condensed Bold is the current free fallback.

Use-case requirements

Guernsey (highest priority)

• Front-left chest, roughly hand-span sized (~150mm wide on adult kit).
• Royal blue garment → wordmark / mark in white + light blue accent. Reverse-colour version required.
• Screen-print and sublimation friendly: no halftones, strokes ≥ 1.5mm at production size.
• No back logo; back is reserved for player number + secondary sponsor.

Cap (embroidered)

• Front panel ~60mm × 30mm, 2:1 aspect ratio. Horizontal wordmark is the primary use.
• All strokes ≥ 1.2mm at 60mm wide. Letter counter-shapes (the holes in A, O, R) must stay open after stitching.
• See Cap design notes for the existing colour-inversion approach on a royal blue cap.

Polo / training tee

• Left chest embroidery, ~70–80mm wide. Same horizontal wordmark as the cap.
• Optional larger version on the back panel of jackets only.

Social media avatar

• No separate square mark in this round (see § What we want).
• The avatar is a centred 1:1 crop of the wordmark on royal blue — the MOORABBIN / KAN fragment that lands inside the square is acceptable.
• Designer to supply a pre-cropped 1024×1024 PNG of this crop alongside the main wordmark exports, so the club doesn’t have to re-crop the wide artwork itself.

Deliverables

Supply all of the following, in a single zip:

Vector source (mandatory)

• .ai and .svg for each of:
  • Horizontal wordmark, full colour (white outline + white→light-blue gradient, designed for royal blue background)
  • Horizontal wordmark, mono white (for use on royal blue where embroidery can’t do the gradient — solid white fill in the lower half)
  • Horizontal wordmark, mono royal blue (for use on white — inverted colours, royal blue outline + royal-blue→mid-blue gradient)
  • Embroidery-safe variant of each of the above using the two-step fill approximation described in § Embroidery fallback.
• Fonts outlined / converted to paths. Do not assume the recipient has the typeface licensed.

Raster exports

• PNG with transparent background at: 4000px (longest edge), 2000px, 1000px, 400px, 200px.
• JPG at 2000px (longest edge) on royal blue background — for use where transparency isn’t supported.
• Avatar crop: 1024×1024 PNG, centred crop of the wordmark on royal blue.

Documentation

• One-page PDF showing all variants with hex / Pantone callouts and a clear-space diagram.
• Embroidery digitising notes if any glyph or stroke needs special treatment at small sizes.

File naming

Use the existing pattern in this repo so files drop straight into /assets/:

mkfc-wordmark-full.svg
mkfc-wordmark-white.svg
mkfc-wordmark-blue.svg
mkfc-wordmark-full-embroidery.svg
mkfc-wordmark-white-embroidery.svg
mkfc-wordmark-blue-embroidery.svg
mkfc-wordmark-avatar-1024.png

Raster exports follow the same stem with size suffixes, e.g. mkfc-wordmark-full-2000.png.

Process & approvals

1. Round 1 — direction: a single wordmark refinement aligned to the § Specification above, supplied as a flat preview PDF or PNG. Show it on royal blue and on white. Include a mocked-up cap-front rendering at actual size (60mm × 30mm) so the committee can sanity-check legibility.
2. Committee review: the club committee approves the direction or sends a single round of feedback. Heritage / one-off variants need separate sign-off (per the Branding rules).
3. Round 2 — refinement: one round of revisions if needed.
4. Final delivery: full file set per § Deliverables above.

Don’t

• Don’t add a tagline, founding year, or location string to the mark itself — those go in layout, not in the logo.
• Don’t supply raster-only artwork. Embroiderers and printers need vector.
• Don’t add extra colours “for the concept” with the intent to drop them later. Design within the three-colour ceiling from the start.
• Don’t reuse the silver-bevelled shield from the legacy logo — it does not embroider and is being retired.

Reference

• Branding — canonical brand guide (palette, typography, logo rules).
• Cap design notes — working notes on cap embroidery, including the split-script approach.
• Legacy logo files (for reference only, not to copy): /mkfc-logo-large.png, /mkfc-logo-large-no-text.png.
• Split-script reference: /assets/merchandise/mkfc-cap-logo-split-italic.jpg.